Will the tariffs end the Golden Age of Bitcoin Mining in the United States?
After China prohibited cryptography in the summer of 2021, a large part of the mining industry was forced to move to Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada and other countries with cheap electricity. However, the greatest beneficiary of this exodus was the United States, which in the last four years has surpassed all other countries in the world in terms of hashrate (which means that there is more bitcoin in the United States than anywhere else).
However, the tariff policies of President Donald Trump, presented on April 2, but stopped at the moment, threaten to increase the costs of the ASIC, the extremely powerful computers used to produce Bitcoin. Only a handful of companies know how to build these ASIC, and most of their manufacturing facilities are found in Southeast Asia, in nations that face approximately 10% to 50% tariffs.
While new taxes will probably do not make it prohibitively expensive for headquarters in the US.
“The United States will continue to be the main source of hashrate worldwide in the predictable future, but its general domain will probably erode as Bitcoin mining becomes a much more global business,” said Taras Kulyk, CEO of the Bitcoin Synteq Digital hardware firm.
“We are certainly going to see the hashrate plateau in terms of relative growth,” he added. “Other countries are reaching space in a big way. Pakistan has just announced that he will dedicate two power gigawatts to Bitcoin mining. There are all kinds of projects that happen in Ethiopia and abroad. They will undoubtedly address a little growth of hashrate capacity.”
Tariffs are just a piece of a much larger puzzle. Other factors, such as the enormous demand for new data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) and the decreasing number of US locations, so that companies establish mining facilities, have a greater impact on the calculations of a miners when it comes to choosing a jurisdiction in which to operate.
The operations based in the US are still, in the short term, capable of taking advantage of a robust secondary market to acquire mining platforms without paying tariffs. In the long term, ASIC manufacturers are taking measures to produce their machines on American soil.
Consensus seems to be that, far from destroying Bitcoin mining in the United States, tariffs are simply being perfected to be a new variable with which the hypercompetitive and rapid movement industry has to deal with.
Biting the bullet
The tariffs mainly presented a challenge to the miners in April for how sudden and steep they were. Miners and logistics companies rushed to push ASIC’s shipments to the US.
Now, however, mining companies have adapted to the idea that imported ASICs will cost at least 10% more than they used to do. But there is uncertainty about whether this is the new normality. The Trump administration is still in the midst of commercial negotiations, and the judicial system has not yet provided a definitive decision on the legality of its new policies.
“It is likely that we have been having a definitive response for a long time about how tariffs will be seen, at least until the Supreme Court intervenes,” said Lauren Lin, hardware director of the Bitcoin Luxor Technology hardware firm, in an interview. “We hope I take a few months, even more than a year.”
Meanwhile, Luxor (which also executes a cargo business) is not seeing panic signs among its customers, although there has been an increase in questions about how to prepare for changes in Washington’s policies, according to Lin. Nor the ASIC secondary market (where companies based in the United States can acquire used and cheaper machines) slowing down, he said. In other words, miners are moving forward.
But there are new difficulties, such as the fact that tariffs also affect imported electrical hardware. The transformers, for example, are mostly manufactured abroad and were already difficult to obtain before April. Tariffs have only worsened the situation. This has been a greater source of frustration for miners than tariffs on ASIC, according to an individual who works for a cryptographic trade organization.
In general, the initial White House tariffs on the nations of Southeast Asia should only be seen as a starting point for a policy that probably evolves over time, said Jeff Laberge, head of capital markets and strategic initiatives in Bitcoin Miner Bitdeer, told Coindesk in an interview. “We are quite optimistic that there will be a reasonable result at the end of this,” he said.
Done in America
The $ 30 billion ASIC market is dominated by Bitmain, a Chinese company whose machines feed approximately 80% of Bitcoin’s hashrate, according to Theminermag. Its competitors include Microbt, Canaan and Bitdeer.
These companies make the vast majority of their ASIC in Malaysia, Thailand and China, although Microbt already has at least one installation in Pennsylvania, and Bitmain announced in December that it would launch a new production line in the United States. Canaan has also completed a US testing test. UU., Which means that it now has the ability to build Asic in the country if you wish.
The Trump administration tariffs are achieving one of their declared objectives (to boost the United States industry) in which they are encouraging these ASIC manufacturers to expand their operations in the country.
Canaan told Coindesk that, although production in the US. The firm said that it is currently exploring the possibility of associating with existing manufacturers based in the United States for its own purposes. Microbt is also looking for ways to avoid tariffs by increasing US production.
Bitdeer, a new but technologically advanced player in the ASIC scene, is considering the situation as an opportunity to take advantage of the headline market share. “We would like to migrate as much as we can to the United States,” Laberge said. “It will take some time to increase that.”
“Being manufacturer and miner gives us tremendous optionality, because we will always have a home for the platforms we produce, either in our own data centers or with a third party,” he added. Bitdeer has mining operations in Texas and Ohio, among other places.
The heavyweight, Bitmain, has not communicated new plans to increase US production since tariffs were announced in April. But the company is likely to demonstrate that it is being built in the United States according to the Trump administration objectives, Kulyk said of Synteq. Bitmain did not respond to a request for comments.
In any case, consensus seems to expand production capacity in the US. It will be a slow and expensive process.
“If our manufacture of machines scale in the US. “In addition, if tariffs on Southeast Asia products [end up being] Under, then we do not necessarily need to develop our manufacturing capabilities in the United States. “
The end of a golden age?
Therefore, miners are quickly adapting to the new reality of tariffs, and ASIC manufacturers seem ready to increase local production. However, the American hashrate (currently is worth more than 40% of global hashrate) it is unlikely that they continue to grow as fast as it has done in the last four years.
On the one hand, tariffs have an impact. Bitcoin Mining is a highly competitive industry, and companies always look for ways to reduce costs. If the choice is between opening a new mining installation in Texas or on Ontario, tariffs can change the decision in favor of the latter.
However, the most important thing is the fact that it is more difficult to find new US locations that meet the necessary requirements to turn new Bitcoin mining operations. “Most of the low fruit has been collected in the United States,” Laberge said.
Not to mention that competition has become more intense. Data centers dedicated to high performance computing (HPC) are appearing throughout the country to climb AI capacities, and the main actors in the industry, Microsoft, Meta, Google, are deeply pocket. If a site is suitable for both mining and HPC, it is unlikely that miners will win a war of offers.
Nor would they necessarily want. HPC data centers are more complex and construction capital, but also bring much higher profits; This has led to a series of Bitcoin mining companies to diversify in AI.
“HPC Chasing Electrons is the main theme for the next two to 10 years,” Kulyk told Coindesk. “Bitcoin miners certainly have back objectives for acquisition and consolidation in space … as a sector, they are likely to eat or absorb them in the general digital computation.”
This phenomenon is likely to remain contained in the US. Due to the technical sophistication required to build and execute HPC centers. Political considerations also play an important role, considering the ongoing arms race between the United States and China. In other words, Bitcoin miners outside the United States will not be affected by the rapid growth of the HPC industry in the same way.
For US miners. UU., The forward path is no longer expanding in terms of megawatts, but in terms of efficiency, according to Laberge.
“If you look at the global hashrate at this time … most platforms have an efficiency of 30 joules by Terahash (J/TH) or higher,” he said. By way of comparison, the latest generation machines of Bitmain and Bitdeer are closer to 10 J/Th of efficiency. “In the current economy, that is marginally profitable at best.”
“All these platforms must cool off,” he continued. “We see this as a directing market of $ 4-6 billion a year for the next three to five years.”
Correction (June 24, 2025, 16:30 UTC): Canaan is not looking to build its own manufacturing facilities based in the US.
